Gentlemen Agree

Japan ignored weak China and the impotent League of Nations last week, faced the first real threat to her designs on Manchuria, a threat from Russia.

The threat: 400 railway cars of the Russian-dominated Chinese Eastern Railway were sent up from Northern Manchuria to the Soviet border town of Pogranichnaya. Japanese realized that these 400 cars could bring an entire Red Army division down to Tsitsihar in North-Central Manchuria whence a Soviet attack might be launched to drive Japan out of Manchuria.

To increase Japanese worries, spies reported that supplies of Soviet ammunitions and machine guns were appearing mysteriously in the Manchurian camps of Chinese "Generals" hostile to Japan. Such threats were no mere League of Nations note or invocation of a shadowy Pact of Paris. Post-haste the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow, Koki Hirota, rushed around to make a deal at the Soviet Foreign Office with that very cold Red fish, Comrade Leonid M. Karakhan.

Comrade Karakhan won ill fame when the Chinese kicked him out of Peking, where he was Ambassador. They found his Embassy crammed with the apparatus of Red propaganda (TIME, May 3, 1926). Today Comrade Karakhan is Soviet Vice

Minister of Foreign Affairs, specializes in Far East diplomacy. His first move was to tell Japanese Ambassador Hirota that "the Soviet Government will follow a policy of strict non-interference in the Manchurian crisis," and to denounce Japan's occupation of Manchuria by implication thus: "The Soviet Government considers that the policy of military occupation, applied under whatever form of so-called protection of interests and nations, is inconsistent with the peaceful policy of the Soviet Union and with the interests of world peace."

After that Mr. Hirota and Comrade Karakhan got down to business. It took them two days to make a deal. During that time Japanese apprehension betrayed itself in Japanese press denunciations of Russia, Japanese charges that Russian troops were "stealthily entering Manchuria."

Suddenly on the third day, the Imperial Government assured Tokyo correspondents that everything was all right. Comrade Karakhan and Ambassador Hirota had arrived, said the Japanese Government spokesman, at the following gentlemen's agreement:

As between Russia and Japan, Manchuria will be considered as divided into two zones, Northern Manchuria and Southern Manchuria. Neither Russia nor Japan will send troops into Northern Manchuria, adjacent to the Soviet frontier, "unless unexpected events occur." So long as Japan confines her military action to Southern Manchuria, where her chief interests lie, the public declaration of Comrade Karakhan will stand: Russia will keep hands off.

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